Web hosting provider Rackspace has acquired JungleDisk, an on the internet backup service, and Virtual Machine provider Slicehost in a deal designed to help bolster its offerings against top competitor Amazon Web Services. The announced acquisition price is $11.5 million in cash and stock, with the possibility of up to an additional $16.5 million depending on performance. Jungle Disk is a file storage and backup service that up until now has relied on Amazon’s Easy Storage Service (S3). With the new announcement the company says that it will start offering the service using Rackspace’s similar service Cloud Files, but will continue to support storage using Amazon with plans to support even more services in the future. Slicehost offers developers “slices” in Xen-based virtual servers that are much cheaper and generally easier to use than a traditional dedicated server. The service is a direct competitor to Amazon’s Elastic Calculate Cloud (EC2).
Web hosting provider Rackspace has acquired JungleDisk, an on the web backup service, and Virtual Machine provider Slicehost in a deal designed to help bolster its offerings against top competitor Amazon Web Services. The announced acquisition price is $11.5 million in cash and stock, with the possibility of up to an additional $16.5 million depending on performance.
Jungle Disk is a file storage and backup service that up until now has relied on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). With the new announcement the company says that it will start offering the service using Rackspace’s similar service Cloud Files, but will continue to support storage using Amazon with plans to support even more services in the future.
Slicehost offers developers “slices” in Xen-based virtual servers that are much cheaper and generally easier to use than a traditional dedicated server. The service is a direct competitor to Amazon’s Elastic Calculate Cloud (EC2).
The additions help strengthen Rackspace’s cloud based services, collectively called Mosso, which the company launched in February.
This is all good news for developers. Amazon has been the dominant force in this space for some time, and competition will only decrease prices and (hopefully) lead to an arms race in features, stability, and performance.
Disclosure: Rackspace is a TechCrunch advertiser.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Starting a high tech company often means going at it alone, but eventually each start-up needs some outside help - whether from lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, or special types of vendors. And other times, a company just needs to sell things. Unfortunately, startups don’t always know where to find help or list items for sale. To help them in these regards, we’ve added services and sales directories to CrunchBoard’s existing jobs directory. These new directories are intended to make it easier for high tech start-ups to find the professional services they need and sell the things that they no longer want or need. Conversely, the services directory in particular provides a door for professional services organizations into the high tech startup community.
Starting a high tech company often means going at it alone, but eventually each start-up needs some outside help - whether from lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, or special types of vendors. And other times, a company just needs to sell things.
Unfortunately, startups don’t always know where to find help or list items for sale. To help them in these regards, we’ve added services and sales directories to CrunchBoard’s existing jobs directory. These new directories are intended to make it easier for high tech start-ups to find the professional services they need and sell the things that they no longer want or need. Conversely, the services directory in particular provides a door for professional services organizations into the high tech startup community.
While there are several such directories on the internet from which to select, we believe that CrunchBoard reaches an unparalleled audience. Companies can list themselves in the services directory for $200 per quarter or post items for sale for $25 per month. As before, jobs can be listed for $200 per quarter.
While you’re checking out these new directories, make sure to check out the newest job listings as well. Here’s some of jobs posted in the past week:
Nokia doesn’t want to miss the next wave of mobile technologies so it is doubling down on its venture investment activities. The cell phone giant is putting another $150 million to work in Nokia Growth Partners, a fund in which it is the only limited partner. This brings the total capital in […]
Nokia doesn’t want to miss the next wave of mobile technologies so it is doubling down on its venture investment activities. The cell phone giant is putting another $150 million to work in Nokia Growth Partners, a fund in which it is the only limited partner. This brings the total capital in the fund to $250 million (Nokia initiated the fund with $100 million in 2004). That is in addition to a $100 million fund of funds also run by Nokia Growth Partners on behalf of Nokia, which is used to sprinkle cash around to other VC firms.
So far the fund has done ideal investing in mobile chip companies, some of which have been acquired by ATI (BitBoys for $44 million), Broadcom (Global Locate for $143 million), and Dolby (Coding Technologies for $250 million). But it is also an investor in mobile video service Kyte. Generally, it is a alter-stage growth fund that looks for companies with a product ready to ramp up.
The new cash comes at a time when the mobile Web is generating excitement again in Silicon Valley. Most of that excitement right now surrounds the iPhone. Throwing around a tiny cash to encourage startups to develop cutting-edge apps for Nokia phones is not a bad strategy. The fund will also invest more heavily in China and India, where mobile growth far outstrips the U.S.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Music-streaming service Pandora joins the growing list of startups laying off employees to survive in a worsening economy. The company let go 20 people yesterday, or 14 percent of its staff. Founder Tim Westergren broke the news in a blog post:
This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually every company, Pandora isn’t immune to the challenges presented by the current economic turmoil. We’re trying to react quickly and responsibly to the new environment.
Music-streaming service Pandora joins the growing list of startups laying off employees to survive in a worsening economy. The company let go 20 people yesterday, or 14 percent of its staff. Founder Tim Westergren broke the news in a blog post:
This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually each company, Pandora isn’t immune to the challenges presented by the current economic turmoil. We are trying to react swiftly and responsibly to the new environment.
. . . There are tough times ahead for the economy, but our listenership is growing rapidly, the Internet radio royalty rate resolution seems finally near, and the explosion of mobile devices like the iPhone are opening up a world of opportunity for internet radio to expand off the desktop. Moreover, our ad sales are growing so well that, not only did we not make any reductions there, we need to continue to hire more.
It’s just hard to be excited about all that this day.
In addition to Pandora, other startups that decided to cut back on headcount so far this month include Jive, AdBrite, Hi5, Seesmic, and Zivity. And eBay laid off more than 1,000 people.
This week we’re reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.
This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.
The unprecedented economic events that are playing out on a global stage began in our own industry and have made a prolonged recession likely, in our judgment. We’re a young company that’s not yet making a profit. Despite having sizeable cash reserves, we deemed the responsible course was to meaningfully reduce expenses, so that Zillow emerges from the other side of the recession in a very strong position, even if the recession lasts many years.
Saying goodbye to dedicated colleagues, who we’ve worked with side by side, is miserable. This is a group of incredibly smart and talented people who helped build and support a product they have the ability to be proud of. I want to thank these folks for their service and contributions and offer my apology for the having to make this decision. I wish the circumstances would grant us to continue having them contribute to Zillow’s success.
One of the reasons this is so difficult is simply because the business continues grow. In the midst of the madness that surrounds us, we counted 5.4 million unique visitors to Zillow.com in September, which was a 42% increase in traffic over this time last year. Fear, value-shopping, and curiosity are driving people in record volumes to our site. The fact that we’ve never spent any money on advertising gives me tremendous confidence in our consumer-centric product vision and in the long-term leverage in our business model (free, open access funded by targeted, relevant advertising). While our revenues do not yet cover our expenses, those revenues have been growing at a rapid pace and we’ll continue to have open positions in areas that are directly tied to revenue, such as advertising salespeople.
So, this is a jolting and sad week for us here at Zillow – both for departing employees and those of us who will be adapting to a smaller organization. However, given the potential for an extended recession, we firmly believe that we are doing what’s painful but necessary to ensure a bright long-term future for a company that, in a very short period of time, has become an important resource and a household name for all those interested in homes.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
YAY! The long awaited, much promised, never delivered Delicious 2.0 will launch in the next few minutes, just like they promised again last week. The new Delicious is just like the old Delicious, except for the way it looks. They’re also promising that it will be “faster, easier to learn,” and “hopefully more desirable.” Speed: We’ve […]
The new Delicious is just like the old Delicious, except for the way it looks. They’re also promising that it will be “faster, easier to learn,” and “hopefully more desirable.”
Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You might not have noticed, but the old backend was getting creaky under the load of five million users.
Search: We’ve totally overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another public user’s bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at massive.
Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.
Users will need to log into their accounts and get a new browser cookie. Honestly, I rarely visit Delicious any more, the Firefox plugin is so good that actually visiting the site isn’t necessary. So all I’m really hoping for here’s a stable service. If there are glitches, I hope they fix them swiftly.
As I said in our previous posts, it’s too bad Delicious 2.0 couldn’t launch before founder Joshua Schachter left the company in frustration. I called Schachter to ask him what he has to say about the new launch. His response - “Good luck. I hope it goes well.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Even though eBay beat its downwardly-revised earnings numbers today, its earnings call was filled with glum news for investors. (Full earnings slides embedded below). After three flat quarters, revenues declined 3.6 percent from the second quarter to $2.2 billion. Free cash flow has been going down each of the last four quarters, and so has the total value of goods traded over the auction and e-commerce site. eBay is leaning much more heavily these days on merchant-dominated categories like autos than on auctions between ordinary people. Even PayPal’s revenues were flat in the quarter at $597 million. Maybe the $945 million acquisition of Bill Me Later will help reignite growth. Its classifieds business (Kijiji) brought in a respectable $250 million in revenues. Another eBay business that’s holding its own, surprisingly, is Skype. Revenues for the third quarter were $143 million. Even though its growth rate is slowing, at least it is still growing, both on an annual (46 percent) and sequential quarterly (5 percent) basis. Its total registered users grew 51 percent to 370 million, and those people used up 16 billion minutes of speak time.
Even though eBay beat its downwardly-revised earnings numbers today, its earnings call was filled with glum news for investors. (Full earnings slides embedded below). After three flat quarters, revenues declined 3.6 percent from the second quarter to $2.2 billion. Free cash flow has been going down each of the last four quarters, and so has the total value of goods traded over the auction and e-commerce site. eBay is leaning much more heavily these days on merchant-dominated categories like autos than on auctions between ordinary people.
Even PayPal’s revenues were flat in the quarter at $597 million. Maybe the $945 million acquisition of Bill Me Later will help reignite growth. Its classifieds business (Kijiji) brought in a respectable $250 million in revenues.
Another eBay business that’s holding its own, surprisingly, is Skype. Revenues for the third quarter were $143 million. Even though its growth rate is slowing, at least it is still growing, both on an annual (46 percent) and sequential quarterly (5 percent) basis. Its total registered users grew 51 percent to 370 million, and those people used up 16 billion minutes of speak time.
The annual growth rate of those minutes ((63 percent) is actually accelerating compared to the preceding quarters. And, most important of all, the number of minutes people actually pay for (2.2 billion Skype Out minutes) is also experiencing accelerating growth (54 percent).
Unfortunately, at only ten percent of eBay’s total revenues, Skype is still too small to counteract its overall decline. Maybe they have the ability to still sell it.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has acquired Irish startup Polldaddy for an undisclosed sum. The buy gives WordPress an infusion of polling technology and seems to be justified simply on the basis that bloggers love polls (we use PollDaddy here at TechCrunch for many of our posts).
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has acquired Irish startup Polldaddy for an undisclosed sum. The buy gives WordPress an infusion of polling technology and seems to be justified simply on the basis that bloggers love polls (we use PollDaddy here at TechCrunch for many of our posts).
There appears to be a plugin rollup strategy of sorts underway at the highly decentralized blogging startup, one that’ll result in the absorption of features into the WordPress codebase that are currently provided through extensions. Automattic recently boughtIntense Debate, a small TechStars startup working on an advanced commenting platform. Further back, it also acquired Buddy Press, a project for layering social networking features onto WordPress, in March and Gravatar, a universal avatar system, last Fall.
Like Intense Debate, Polldaddy doesn’t offer its technology to WordPress publishers alone - and it doesn’t plan to phase out its support for other platforms post-acquisition. But we can expect both companies’ efforts to be driven primarily towards improving WordPress - both the open source version offered at WordPress.org, but even more importantly the hosted version at WordPress.com (with which Automattic can actually make money). PollDaddy has already been baked into WordPress.com for its 4.4 million bloggers.
Given the economic concerns that many startups (domestic and global) have in these volatile times, I’m sure that both PollDaddy and Intense Debate are happy to have found a home within a bigger and better funded startup. The fact that PollDaddy is based in Ireland shouldn’t have much impact on Automattic’s corporate structure. As CEO Toni Schneider explained at a current Startup2Startup event, Automattic has no central office and all its employees work remotely from home, only to meet up a couple times per year as a company.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the “massive” new search engine that was supposed to be able to keep up with Google, has just gotten its first knockoff. It’s Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that looks nearly exactly like Cuil. And, oddly enough, Yuil might actually work better than its much-hyped […]
It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the “massive” new search engine that was supposed to be able to keep up with Google, has just gotten its first knockoff. It’s Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that looks almost exactly like Cuil. And, oddly enough, Yuil might actually work superior than its much-hyped predecessor.
In a surprising (and hilarious) twist, Yuil is actually the product of Yahoo VP of Platforms, Sam Pullara, who is using the site to show off Yahoo’s recently-released BOSS API. BOSS is very special among search engine APIs, giving developers an unprecedented level of control over results generated by Yahoo’s search engine. And while Yuil isn’t really doing anything new with its search results, they’re more relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones we’ve been getting from Cuil.
Developers are only just starting to tap into the power afforded by the BOSS API - we’ll probably see dozens of similar search engines like this pop up over the next few months. The difference between these, and the generic API-based engines we’ve seen before, is that developers will be able to manipulate and reorder the results to make them more meaningful - something that APIs from most other search engines prohibit.
Update: Looks like someone in the Yahoo or Cuil camp doesn’t have a sense of humor. Pullara has just updated his blog to say he’s taken Yuil down:
“Yuil is dead. However, you can always get the same great search results here.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The third quarter saw the number of U.S. venture funds raising new cash decline by 29 percent to 55 funds, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. That compares to 78 new funds a year ago and 76 new funds in the second quarter of 2008. And 45 of that 55 were follow-on funds rather than new funds. Each of those funds, though, raised a lot more money on average. The total raised for the third quarter was $8.1 billion, down only 6 percent from the third quarter of 2007 (but down 12 percent from the $9.2 billion raised in the previous quarter of this year). And remember, all of this was before the financial meltdown of the past two weeks that had alarm bells ringing at every VC firm.
The third quarter saw the number of U.S. venture funds raising new cash decline by 29 percent to 55 funds, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. That compares to 78 new funds a year ago and 76 new funds in the second quarter of 2008. And 45 of that 55 were follow-on funds rather than new funds.
Each of those funds, though, raised a lot more money on average. The total raised for the third quarter was $8.1 billion, down only 6 percent from the third quarter of 2007 (but down 12 percent from the $9.2 billion raised in the previous quarter of this year).
And remember, all of this was before the financial meltdown of the past two weeks that had alarm bells ringing at every VC firm.
The three largest funds in the quarter were Sequoia Capital’s $930 million late-stage fund, Austin Ventures’ $900 million balanced-stage fund, and InterWest Partners’ $650 million early-stage fund. In general, more money is going towards later stage, proven businesses than early stage financings. (More at VentureBeat).
Web hosting provider Rackspace has acquired JungleDisk, an on the internet backup service, and Virtual Machine provider Slicehost in a deal designed to help bolster its offerings against top competitor Amazon Web Services. The announced acquisition price is $11.5 million in cash and stock, with the possibility of up to an additional $16.5 million depending on performance. Jungle Disk is a file storage and backup service that up until now has relied on Amazon’s Easy Storage Service (S3). With the new announcement the company says that it will start offering the service using Rackspace’s similar service Cloud Files, but will continue to support storage using Amazon with plans to support even more services in the future. Slicehost offers developers “slices” in Xen-based virtual servers that are much cheaper and generally easier to use than a traditional dedicated server. The service is a direct competitor to Amazon’s Elastic Calculate Cloud (EC2).
Music-streaming service 
The layoff train continues: Zillow CEO 
Users will need to log into their accounts and get a new browser cookie. Honestly, I rarely visit Delicious any more, the Firefox plugin is so good that actually visiting the site isn’t necessary. So all I’m really hoping for here’s a stable service. If there are glitches, I hope they fix them swiftly.
Even though eBay beat its downwardly-revised 
The third quarter saw the number of U.S. venture funds raising new cash decline by 29 percent to 55 funds, according to data from the 
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